Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

Long-Running Legal Battle Has Kept Tri-Care Healthcare District From Reaching Its Vision With Medical Office

Though a jury set the building’s value at $16.8 million and tacked on nearly $3 million in damages, the public hospital district has refused to pay up, filing an appeal in late 2016 that has kept the building in a sort of real estate stasis.

The San Diego Union-Tribune:
Legal Tangles Keep Tri-City Medical Office Building In Limbo
Five years after it was declared “substantially complete,” the newest building on Tri-City Medical Center’s Oceanside campus remains empty. Though its tinted windows have become a familiar sight just north of Highway 78 where Oceanside bleeds into Vista, no one has ever used the medical office building for its intended purpose. A temporary chain-link fence still surrounds the three-story facility built in one of the hospital’s outlying parking lots. No one desires this continued vacancy. Since 2010, when construction began, Tri-City Healthcare District has had big plans to fill the building with doctors’ offices and other personnel necessary to remain relevant in a quickly changing and highly competitive local health care market. UC San Diego, at one time, planned to lease a whole floor of the 60,000-square-foot building. (Sisson, 6/18)

In other news from across the state —

Ventura County Star:
Ventura County Home Care Workers To Get 9 Percent Pay Increase
About 6,000 home care workers in Ventura County are eligible for a wage increase of $1.14 an hour under an agreement OK’d this week. The three-year contract contains pay raises of 9 percent, bringing wages from $12.50 to $13.64 an hour by 2020. From that point on, the workers’ pay will always stay 64 cents above the minimum wage, said county officials and the Service Employees International Union, which represents the employees. (Wilson, 6/15)

The Associated Press:
California ER Doctor Seen On Video Mocking Patient Suspended
A Northern California emergency room doctor has been suspended after cursing and mocking a man who said he had an anxiety attack. The San Jose Mercury News reports that Dr. Beth Keegstra, a contract doctor with El Camino Hospital in Los Gatos, was suspended after she was recorded on June 11 questioning whether 20-year-old Samuel Bardwell was sick or just looking for drugs. (6/17)

Bloomberg:
The Dark Side Of The Orgasmic Meditation Company
OneTaste is a sexuality-focused wellness education company based in the Bay Area. It’s best known for classes on “orgasmic meditation,” a trademarked procedure that typically involves a man using a gloved, lubricated fingertip to stroke a woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes. For Michal, like those at her wedding, OneTaste was much more than a series of workshops. It was a company that had, in less than a year, gained sway over every aspect of her life. ...But many who’ve become involved in the upper echelons describe an organization that they found ran on predatory sales and pushed members to ignore their financial, emotional, and physical boundaries in ways that left them feeling traumatized. (Huet, 6/18)

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